Hi Giuseppe

I'm cross-posting to maria-discuss since this is now a non-technical discussion. Please remove maria-developers when replying.

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Giuseppe Maxiag.maxia@gmail.com wrote:

Why it's perfectly OK that MariaDB gets MySQL bugfixes for free and instead it's a rip off if MySQL gets MariaDB bug fixes?

Of course, all of the MariaDB source code is available as GPL, just like for MySQL. Sun is not prohibited from using it under the GPL, just like we are using MySQL code.

MariaDB requires the same kind of legal grants that Sun asks, and the FAQ even states "The MCA is based on Sun's Contributor Agreement. We think it is one of the best contributor agreements around! " http://askmonty.org/wiki/index.php/MCA_FAQ

We've made some adjustments, but yes, apparently it is one of the best contributor agreements around, the community seems to think. That's why we use it.

So, where is the catch? If Sun asks for the SCA, it's "greedy salesmen". If MariaDB asks the same thing, it's "protecting the community".

Actually, it is very important that MariaDB copyrights are pooled to one owner, we could get into trouble if we didn't do that. (I won't give the details, so as not to give any ideas.)

Same is true for XtraDB, where we have advised Percona to pool the copryights from any non-Percona contributors. It's not like we (MP) want to own everything, but somebody has to do it.

Personally my first motivation in favor of pooling copyrights was however entirely benevolent towards MySQL and its users. By having the copyrights pooled in one place (rather than just going all GPL), we are able to assign the code back to Sun (if we so agree), and I'd really like to do that so that all MySQL users, also the commercial licensees would benefit from the MariaDB work.

henrik